Hi Chase, The LFS work is certainly not the priority. Currently I'm mostly busy with checking the build status on various platforms. Ubuntu builds cleanly, but the NetBSD builds are hopelessly broken. It will probably take some time to fix that, because there are two major problems:
a) ast-ksh doesn't build, and the newer maintained version requires meson, which depends on py-expat, which is also broken. Workaround: Use the NetBSD 6.x binary, but that is certainly not the ideal solution. b) Building the documentation doesn't work. dtdocbook bombs out without any meaningful error message. CDE installs fine without all the help files, but to me that's still a broken installation, and I'm currently looking into it. I have access to AIX machines if there's help needed in that regard. I can also test on the following systems : - Slackware - FreeBSD 9 - 12 - NetBSD 6-8 - cygwin (yes, I've already got some of the stuff to build on Window$. Autotools will be a big help as imake is hopeless in the cygwin environment) - CentOS - LFS - Gentoo - Solaris x86 As for dtmail. If a rebuild is not the preferred option then I'll try my luck with the existing base. However, in that regard, we should be aware that many of the gazillion warnings we get during the build will more and more turn into errors as Xorg moves further and further from the original X11, so at some point we won't be able to avoid rewrites of certain parts. Try building openwin (olvwm) on a modern Xorg and a post 2.28 glibc and you'll see what I mean. For the time being I'll conentrate on looking through the mess that is the NetBSD build. cheers, Hippo On Fri, 22 Feb 2019 at 04:23, Chase <nicetry...@protonmail.ch> wrote: > I don't mean to sound discouraging or anything, but does the world really > need a CDE linux distro? Would you be able to maintain such a custom > distro? My primary goal in contributing to the project is to get CDE > available in the debian repos and lay the groundwork for the other distros > to package it into their repos, thus making the need for a custom distro > with CDE preinstalled redundant. That also seems like a lot of work, I > would much rather see DtMail fixed up than you splitting your free time > between that and an entire distro. I would however also like to advise > against a rewrite if possible for DtMail, as this is a historical project > somewhat, I would like to see if we can use/improve it in any way first > before we just discard it. > > As for my autotools progress, I am about 80% done with the base Makefiles, > I am going to test the build once I have one to one parity with our Imake > build. On this issue, Once I have the linux version of the autotool build > finished, I would like to upload it to a separate branch for the community > to test, as I do not think that I would do justice testing it in VMs for > operating systems other than linux, as I am not familiar with them. Ulrich, > if you are reading, I think you should commit your experimental OSX code > before I make the commit (should still be a month or two down the pipeline, > but I'm pretty sure another dramatic shift in the code would require a > rewrite). I also definitely know AIX and HPUX builds will be broken with > this, but maybe David Cantrell could help getting hands on the former now > that he's joined the dark side of big blue :) (too soon?). There's also a > guy who seem to be running AIX on his pinebook with CDE built, I think he's > posted to the discussions but I can't be sure. > > I would very much like to see a new ksh in our build. I know Marcin > Ciezlak (sorry if I butchered that) said he would look into it, and even > stepped in to maintain ast-ksh on freebsd, but I'm sure that alone probably > opened up a can of worms for him. They use meson, and I could see that > being a problem (maybe CMake can integrate ninja and make files together? I > am not going to do the research on this or contribute to such an effort > anyhow, I have already learnt automake and such, and keeping make > compatibility seems like the right choice). > > Thank you for your time, > -Chase > > > ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ > On Thursday, February 21, 2019 5:27 AM, Danilo Pecher < > danilo.pec...@data-experts.biz> wrote: > > Hi all, > > Thanks for the replies. > > I was expecting calls to bring back CDEbian, but I'm somewhat torn on > that, since Debian, like far too many distros has gone to the dark side and > switched to systemd, which turns a perfectly servicable Linux into Windows > 9 Linux OS, so it's either a fork from debian or going the full mile and > make a distro based on LFS, which also has the added bonus of being tailor > made for the architecture. > > I have a test rig with a Ryzen 5 2500U octo-core, which has both Ubuntu > 18.04 and my current nightly build of "CDELfs" on it. Ubuntu doesn't even > boot without deactivating half the processor's features by kernel command > line. The LFS instead takes about 4 hours to compile and install, which is > certainly a point to be made in its disfavour, but it boots cleanly and in > comparison to the generic code in the Ubuntu install, the optimized LFS > binaries are almost comically fast. for instance the build times for CDE: > > On Ubuntu 18.04: 6 minutes, 34 seconds > On LFS: 2 minutes, 16 seconds. > > So I'm leaning towards LFS, but the lack of a package manager is a a > severe drawback. Currently I'm evaluating two possible candidates : pkgsrc > and portage-index, which might mitigate that. > > dtmail will most certainly get a hefty refresh, but it will have to be a > rewrite, as I know of no halfway up-to-date motif based email client that > one could start with. In a first step I'm planning on a plain-text only > version as I also don't know of any halfway decent motif-based web engine > and introducing masses of gome or kde dependencies would beat the purpose > of CDE. > > Cheers, > Hippo > > > On Wed, 2019-02-20 at 23:27 -0600, Matthew R. Trower wrote: > > > Additionally, ninja or meson would severely restrict platform > > support. CMake could be alright. > > > > It would be great to see DtMail given new life. > > > > -mrt > > > > From: Christopher Turkel > > Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2019 20:50 > > To: CDE development > > Subject: Re: [cdesktopenv-devel] Back in the flock > > > > Bring back CDEbian, that would be great! > > > > CDE still builds on OpenBSD just fine, since that's what I use these > > days. > > > > On Wed, Feb 20, 2019 at 9:47 PM Jon Trulson <j...@radscan.com> wrote: > > > > On 2/20/19 1:53 PM, Danilo Pecher wrote: > > > > Hi everybody, > > > > > > > > I've been away for quite a while from CDE related work, so long > > > in fact, > > > > I don't even have the same name anymore. Back then I was going by > > > the > > > > name of Danilo Schöneberg, now I'm Danilo Pecher. The reason for > > > that is > > > > simple: I got married at the tender young age of 44. > > > > > > > > > > Congratulations! :) > > > > > > > Now that I'm getting back to contributing, I've got a few things > > > in mind > > > > to work on in the near future, and would like some input from > > > others: > > > > > > > > 1. One of the first things I'll be doing is streamlining the > > > build > > > > instruction pages. They've become cluttered a bit and I want to > > > test if > > > > some of them are still working. Especially NetBSD is a bit of a > > > tricky > > > > patient here. On 7.2 everything works and on 8.0 half the stuff > > > is > > > > broken. Some work to do there. For most systems I'll probably > > > provide > > > > automated build-scripts. > > > > > > > > > > Quite possible - I've only been testing with FreeBSD 11 in addition > > > to > > > the Ubuntus. > > > > > > > 2. Although I've been rather inactive on the project itself, I've > > > not > > > > been completely idle. I'm about 75% done in creating a CDE-based > > > Linux > > > > distro based on LFS, complete with automated build. What do > > > people > > > > think? Would there be a "market" for that? > > > > > > > > > > Linux From Scratch? Probably... I've heard several people wanting > > > the > > > CDEbian distro to be resurrected/maintained, so I assume there are > > > those > > > what would love a one-stop solution. > > > > > > > 3. Point 2 sort of exposes that we've got a massive problem in > > > terms of > > > > applications. Except for editors (both VIM and Emacs come with > > > Motif > > > > GUIs and integrate nicely) we've got close to no apps that really > > > > integrate seamlessly. Well, we can probably agree that there'll > > > never be > > > > a dtwww web browser, unless someone wants to take leave of > > > his/her > > > > social life to write a motif based web engine, but I think we > > > should be > > > > able to modernize dtmail and ship in a slightly more versatile > > > default > > > > text editor (you may take that as me volunteering) > > > > > > > > > > Yay :) I think dtmail needs to be fixed, or removed. It doesn't > > > support a lot of things a modern mailer would, like for example > > > SSL/TLS :) > > > > > > Making dtpad a more modern and useful editor would also be cool. > > > > > > > 4. I know work is going on for an autotools conversion. In that > > > regard, > > > > I'd like to ask if we aren't going to end up being Betamax-man > > > again. At > > > > least by the look of it, cmake/ninja/meson seem to be taking over > > > in a > > > > growing number of projects. While we're at that, I'm going to set > > > the > > > > cat among the pidgeons a bit. Would it not be a better idea to > > > make a > > > > hard break with the current (chaotic and nigh-on impossible to > > > > comprehend) build system and switch to a clean-sheet rebuild for > > > a 3.x > > > > release? > > > > > > I think autotools will be around for awhile (Hows that going > > > Chase?). > > > But I have been thinking CMake might be nice too. That one seems > > > to be > > > getting more and more popular, and it can generate ninja files > > > too. It > > > also has the benefit of maturity and wide spread adoption. > > > > > > I might spend some time looking into that when I get some time. > > > > > > I think meson is too young at present -- though I've never tried > > > it. I > > > have done CMake though, and I do like it. autotools m4 makes my > > > brain > > > hurt :) > > > > > > > Perhaps, if we do that, we might also get a chance of getting rid > > > of > > > > the ksh-dependency for dtterm. That's been giving me rabies > > > since > > > > 2016. ast-ksh seems to be all but unmaintained. and that's the > > > only > > > > suitable candidate on a variety of platforms (BSD mainly, but > > > also > > > > LFS, slackware and serveral other Linux variants on which it only > > > > builds on a sunny day with less than 3 knots of wind)> > > > > > > Well, I wasn't aware that dtterm depended on ksh - that we should > > > be > > > able to get rid of I would think. > > > > > > I do know that building CDE's dtksh/ksh requires an already working > > > ksh > > > install (sigh). > > > > > > But att-ksh is actively being maintained here: > > > > > > https://github.com/att/ast > > > > > > I'm "following" them in git-speak. They have removed a great deal > > > of > > > cruft, fixed many bugs, and are only maintaining the parts of AST > > > that > > > ksh actually depends on. Check the commit history... > > > > > > I'd love to dump our version and use that one someday. It also has > > > the > > > benefit of not requiring ksh to... build ksh. :) > > > > > > > Okay, so much for now, I'll start firing up my test boxes to see > > > which > > > > systems we correctly build on. Ubuntu 14.04, 16.04 and 18.04 > > > > successfully checked out today. > > > > > > > > > > Welcome back! > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > cdesktopenv-devel mailing list > > > cdesktopenv-devel@lists.sourceforge.net > > > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/cdesktopenv-devel > > > >
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